A new walkway and information board has been erected in Cartmel Priory churchyard in recognition of William Wordsworth’s former teacher.
The Rev William Taylor, who taught the poet at Hawkshead Grammar School, is widely credited with encouraging the young Wordsworth to start writing.
In Book X of his epic Prelude, Wordsworth speaks of the emotion of visiting the grave of ‘the honoured teacher of my youth’.
He said: “Upon his tombstone, whispering to myself: He loved the Poets, and, if now alive, would have loved me, as one not destitute of promise, not belying the kind hope that he had formed, when I, at his command, began to spin, with toil, my earliest songs.”
The new walkway will be officially opened and the storyboard unveiled by Wordsworth biographer, Professor Stephen Gill, on the first day of the Lake District Book Festival – also the 240th anniversary of Taylor’s death – on June 12.
